Rhein-Neckar-Arena: Hoffenheim

Known simply as Hoffenheim to most football fans, the club’s full title is TSG 1899 Hoffenheim. Just to add a further complication, TSG stands for Turn- und Sportgemeinschaft, which itself translates into Gymnastics and Sporting Club, giving you an indication of where the club came from. In actual fact, the club as it is today was created in 1945 when the gymnastics club of Turnverein Hoffenheim merged with Fußballverein Hoffenheim and it’s the gymnastics side of Hoffenheim that dates back to 1899.

As for the stadium, it’s significantly younger than the football club, having opened in 2009. It was opened as a replacement for the club’s former stadium, Dietmar-Hopp-Stadion. That place only had enough room for less than six and a half thousand people, so once Hoffenheim had been taken over by Deitmar Hopp in 2000 and it became clear that his intention was to see them make their way to the top of the German football league, it was obvious that a bigger stadium was required. The Rhein-Neckar-Arena has a capacity of 30,150.

Rhein-Neckar-Arena Seating Plan & Where to Sit

funky1opti / flickr.com

Hoffenheim’s football ground follows the European style of stadium in being a bowl of continuous seating. Three sides of it have one tier of seating, with the third being split in half to accommodate the club’s Business Club.

Hoffenheim Ticket Prices

As with most top clubs, Hoffenheim categorise their football matches and charge different prices depending on who they’re playing. You’ll also pay a different amount of money for your ticket depending your age and where in the ground you’d like to sit. At the time of writing, only Bayern Munich class as a category A club, with Borussia Dortmund, Borussia Monchengladbach and FC Schalke being category B teams. Full fee payers will pay from €12 for a standing ticket to €41 for a seat at a category A game. Senior citizens will pay from €11 to €39, whilst kids will pay between €9 and €30.

How To Get Hoffenheim Tickets

You can buy tickets from the club in person, but your best bet is to head to the official website.

Getting To Rhein-Neckar-Arena

Train - It will take about eight hours to get to Hoffenheim from London, going first to Paris, then to Karlsruhe, moving on to Heidelberg before finally arriving in Hoffenheim itself. The nearest stop on the internal train line in Germany is the Sinsheim Museum/Arena stop, which is about twenty minutes walk from the stadium.

Bus - Bus isn’t really the best way to get around, but you can get a shuttle bus from the Sinsheim Museum/Arena train station to the ground if you want to.

Car - The A6 is the main road that you’ll want to get on for your journey to the Rhein-Neckar-Arena. It’s worth noting that this is often very busy, so make sure you give yourself enough time to get there for kick-off.

By Air - There is an airfield really close to the stadium, but it’s only for gliders and light aircraft. The main alternative for international flights is Stuttgart Airport, but it’s about 100 miles away so it’ll be a bit of a journey to get to the ground from there.

Taxi - A taxi from the centre of Hoffenheim through to the Rhein-Neckar-Arena will take about ten minutes and cost you in the region of €20.

Parking Near Rhein-Neckar-Arena

There are a couple of parking areas not far from the ground, which you’ll have to pay for in order to be able to use them.

Rhein-Neckar-Arena Hotels

This member of the Best Western chain of hotels is about ten miles from the stadium, so you’ll have to travel in for the match. It’s worth it, though, with more than 100 rooms available to choose from. There’s also a restaurant, a business centre, a fitness suite complete with spa services and even a terrace that you can sit on if the weather’s good. More details.

Just over two miles from the ground is this pleasant three-star hotel with just over thirty rooms. There’s a restaurant and a bar and you’ll be able to access a hot buffet breakfast there in the morning, which is included in the price of your stay. Likewise there’s free Wi-Fi and free parking, as well a health club and spa. There’s a terraced area and a garden, plus a meeting room. More details.

About three miles from the Rhein-Neckar-Arena is another hotel with just over thirty rooms. There are similar amenities here to at the Wincent Hotel, including free Wi-Fi and free parking. There’s also a restaurant and a bar area as well as a conference room, a terrace and a garden. If you like to relax then you might want to consider using the steam room. More details.

Pubs & Bars Near Rhein-Neckar-Arena

Rhein-Neckar-Arena isn’t near anything interesting, to be honest, so if you want to watch some live sport then you’ll be best travelling outside of the local area. Here are some options, but be aware that you’ll have to do some travelling to get to the ground.

1st Pub

Hauptstraße 21, 69190, Walldorf (+49 6227 61457)

1st Pub is about twenty minutes drive from Rhein-Neckar-Arena and is a cracking venue for live music. You can watch live sport there, but to be honest it’s more for seeing bands and musicians. You’ll be able to get whatever type of drink you want, within reason, as well as bar snacks and other bits of food.

Palmbräu Gasse

Hauptstraße 185, 69117, Heidelberg (+49 6221 28536)

Even further afield at around thirty minutes away is this restaurant that sits in the heart of Heidelberg. It’s more about the food than live sport, with a delicious menu presenting itself to you. You’ll be able to choose from German specialities such as crispy knuckles or other tasty morsels like a well cooked steak. When it comes to drink, you’ll find some excellent German beers on tap as well as all of the usual non-alcoholic offerings.

Sharkeys deLuxe

Gustav-Binder-Straße 7, 74072, Heilbronn (+49 7131 1241114)

Midway between the two offerings above at around twenty-five minutes drive, Sharkeys deLuxe is an American-style diner with a sports twist. With that in mind, it should be no surprise that you'll be able to get burgers, chips, hot-dogs and so on to eat there. You can watch different sports on screens around the place whilst you enjoy a beer or a coke. If you want to eat, watch some football and do so in a more relaxed environment then this is the place for you.

Hospitality

As mentioned a moment ago, half of the East Tribune is given over to Hoffenheim’s Business Club so it’s fair to say that there are a number of excellent options for you if you want to watch the game in style. Whether you want to sit in the business seats or hire a 'logen', you’ll get access to all three levels of the Business Club, which offer a first-class service.

Private Hire

State-of-the-art technology is available for meetings that are hosted at the Rhein-Neckar-Arena, meaning that it’s the best place in Hoffenheim to host an event. You can take from ten people up to two thousand there, so meetings big or small can be hosted in 1899’s home ground.

Stadium Tours & Museum

You can do a tour of the Rhein-Neckar-Arena that will take in the likes of the dressing rooms, press area and the tunnel to the pitch. They aren’t run all that regularly, so you’re best to contact the club in advance to check whether one’s going on before you head there.

About Hoffenheim

assillo / flickr.com

Prior to Dietmar Hopp’s return to the club he supported as a child in 2000 as a financial backer, Hoffenheim was not a club many people in Germany had thought much about. The club had bounced around in the lower leagues of German football for the majority of its existence, gaining promotion to the Oberliga Baden-Württemberg the same year that Hopp returned. They won that league, too, seeing them gain promotion to the third-tier Regionalliga Süd ahead of the 2001-2002 campaign. In 2007 they gained promotion to 2. Bundesliga and played professional football for the first time. It didn’t take them long to make it all the way to top of German football, being promoted to the Bundesliga for the 2008-2009 season.

As far as a further history is concerned, it was all based around the merger of smaller clubs in the town of Hoffenheim. Turnverein Hoffenheim, the gymnastics club, was formed on the 1st of July in 1899. That was 22 years before the local football team, Fußballverein Hoffenheim, was founded. The merger happened in 1945 and over the following 45 years or so the new club established itself as a decent local side. They were no more than that prior to Hopp’s arrival, which has caused some controversy in Germany owing to the fact that they have essentially bought their success. That said, the only non-league silverware they’ve won is the North Baden Cup, which they picked up four times in the 2000s.

Rhein-Neckar-Arena History

Officially known as the Wirsol Rhein-Neckar-Arena because of sponsorship by the solar energy company Wirsol, ground was broken on the building of the stadium in 2007. It was completed at the start of 2009 at a cost of around €100 million. It is the largest football ground in the metropolitan area of Rhine-Neckar, with a capacity of over 30,000. In fact, it is only around 6,000 seats shy of being able to fit the entire population of Sinsheim inside it. It’s worth noting that the ground can be found in Sinsheim, rather than Hoffenheim itself.

As well as hosting Hoffenheim matches since it opened its doors in 2009, the stadium has also been used for numerous other purposes. For example, in 2011 it was one of the grounds used for international matches in the FIFA Women's World Cup. In 2017 it was the venue for the DEL Winter Game, an outdoor hockey match between the Schwenningen Wild Wings and Adler Mannheim. Given that the Dietmar-Hopp-Stadion had a capacity of just 6,350 and the Rhein-Neckar-Arena regularly sells out its 30,150 capacity, it’s far to say that the club made the right decision to move to a new venue.